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Re: st: -timer-
Joseph Coveney <[email protected]> asked,
> Does anyone know what -timer- does or how to use it?
>
> . which timer
> built-in command: timer
>
> It wasn't there this February when I wrote my own little -timer.ado- to
> convert SAS's seconds-from-midnight into a Stata string (hh:mm:ss) for a
> project that's ongoing in fits and starts, so it's new since Release 9.2
> (Windows).
We apolgize to Joseph for breaking his -timer.ado-.
-timer- is an profiling tool we use internally at StataCorp and never deserved
such a good name. In fact, -timer- has been in the Linux version of Stata
since about Stata 8 and just recently, as Joseph notes, was put into all
versions of Stata, because we were using it to test Stata/MP.
We should have renamed it when we did that.
The damage is now done.
We will add an "undocumented" help file for -timer-. In the meantime,
documentation can be found below.
Title
-----
timer -- Profiling tool
Syntax
------
timer clear [#]
timer on #
timer off #
timer list [#]
where # is an integer, 1 <= # <= 100
Description
-----------
The -timer- command starts, stops, and reports up to 100 interval timers.
Results are reported in units of seconds.
-timer clear- resets timers to zero.
-timer on- begins a timing. -timer off- stops a timing. A timing may be
turned on and off repeatedly without clearing and the timer then
accumulates.
-timer list- lists the timings. If # is not specified, timers that
contain 0 are not listed.
Remarks
-------
-timer- can be used to time sections of code. For instance,
program tester
version ...
timer clear 1
forvalues repeat=1(1)100 {
timer on 1
mycmd ....
timer off 1
}
timer list 1
end
Saved results
-------------
-timer list- saves in r()
r(t1) value of 1st timer
r(t2) value of 2nd timer
...
r(t100) value of 100th timer
If r(t#)==0, its value is not saved. r() is *NOT* cleared by
-timer list-, so as not to interfere with saved results by the
program being timed.
-- Bill -- Vince -- Hua
[email protected] [email protected] [email protected]
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